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Tuesday 10 February 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 9 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Convertito, Bill
(? - ) US author of an sf thriller, The Rombella Shuttle (1977), in which radical changes in the environment and human behaviour leads to justified Paranoia about the corrupting presence of Aliens adapted to be indistinguishable from humans; the human protagonist falls in love with one of these, and the conspiracy begins to unravel. [JC]
Speer, Flora
(1933-2024) US author of romantic fictions, mostly nonfantastic, almost all published in the last decade of the twentieth century. Her first work of sf interest, the loose Dulan's Planet sequence of Planetary Romance tales beginning with Destiny's Lovers (1990), presents a set of love stories and intrigues connected through Dulan's Planet, so-named after the archivist who long before (see Time Abyss) had ...
Konkevič, Alexsandr
(1842-?1917) Russian author whose Future War tale, Krejsev "Russkaja Nadežda" (1886 Russkoje Sudohodstvo; 1887; trans Charles James Cooke as The "Russia's Hope"; Or, Britannia No Longer Rules the Waves: Showing How the Muscovite Bear Got at the British Whale 1888) as A K, shows the Russian navy rapidly wiping out the British navy, aided by an advanced Weapon in the form of a fast and accurate ...
Harrison, Troon
(1958- ) Canadian author, initially of picture books for children, more recently of Young Adult novels; she is deft with horses. The Tales of Terre sequence [see Checklist] is fantasy. Of sf interest is Eye of the Wolf (2003), set in a Dystopian North America a century hence as it faces a new Ice Age, the young protagonist, whose mother has been inveigled into the warm South, experiences ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...